


Hold It Together While You're Falling Apart

by thewaymyfoxwas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Endverse, Falling Cas, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 16:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewaymyfoxwas/pseuds/thewaymyfoxwas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the angels abandoning Earth and taking Heaven's power with them, Castiel's grace dies from the inside out. It is all Dean can do to hold him by his side as it happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold It Together While You're Falling Apart

_We were drawn from the weeds_  
 _We were brave like soldiers_  
 _Falling down under the pale moonlight_  
 _You were holding to me_  
 _Like a someone broken_  
 _And I couldn't tell you but I'm telling you now_  
  
 _Just let me hold you while you're falling apart_  
 _Just let me hold you and we'll both fall down_

They knew Cas was falling.

Dean had assumed that one day Cas would just wake up from sleep he shouldn’t have needed and it would just be gone. Wings and grace and the fire of millennia, simply  _gone_.

Perhaps it would have been easier if it had. Ripping off the band aid in one tug.

He hadn’t expected it to  _wither_  the way it did.

He hadn’t been prepared for the night the angels abandoned ship, shutting and barricading the pearly gates behind them; all but Castiel, Angel of Thursdays, who, rather than return to the safety and peace of Heaven, had been found pacing in a parking lot at five in the morning, wide eyed and trembling.

_I can’t hear them._

_They’ve gone._

_Dean._

_It’s so quiet._

_How can it be this quiet?_

_How can it **always**  be this quiet?_

Nor had he been prepared for the fear, for how crippled Cas had been the first time he touched his hand to a monster’s head to smite the life from its body, and after a beat of empty silence, had been punched in the face. He’d stood staring at the puddle of blood trickling between his mouth and palm while Dean had finished the job, and didn’t speak when a hand grabbed his bicep. Dean led him back to the car, cleaned his split lip, and joined Cas in his silence for the rest of the night.

Cas lost it slowly, the angel disappearing in stages.

Dean had questioned Cas about the whys and hows just once, asked about Anna, how she went from angel to human in one quick, brutal swoop. Asked why it was over so fast for her, while Cas’ agony was lasting weeks.

"Anna forcibly removed her grace by her own hand. My grace was not removed, it’s not flourishing in a tree somewhere. It’s not  _gone_. It’s  _dying_.”

~

The grace that had thrummed through Cas like electricity didn’t blow out like light bulbs in a Pontiac warehouse.

You could see its power fading, fizzling out to barely more than a dim glow. Dean could see it, anyway. Every time Cas bled, or stumbled, or woke up shaking, vomiting, begging Dean to give him painkillers, whiskey, pills, a joint,  _something - it hurts, I can’t sleep, I can’t move, I can’t **breathe**. Dean,  **please**. _  What he couldn’t see was how it festered. His grace was dying, after all. Broken and diseased. A rot seeping into everything.

It took weeks to reach his wings.

~

Of all that had happened to take the light out of the angel, Dean was probably least prepared for this. They were holed up in an abandoned motel, their growing group of survivors spread through the rooms. They were scared, untrained, uneducated. Some were children, others as good as. They were looking to Dean to lead them. Soon, Dean will find them a camp, a home called Chitaqua, and Cas will call him “Fearless Leader” in a mocking tone that no one else will be permitted to use. Soon, they will get back to work, and Cas will follow and break and die to help Dean kill both of their brothers with a single bullet.

But tonight, they are cloistered together in a motel room, pressed against each other in one filthy bed.

Dean woke up at 3:07 am to the sound of violent heaving and strangled gasping coming from the bathroom.

The cold air felt sharp against his bare chest as he walked to the door. It seemed to feel cold a lot these days, despite the near constant sunshine.

He pushed at the door, letting it swing open slowly; giving Cas the chance to stop it, slam it back shut and tell Dean to leave him alone, but no such demand came.

At the threshold, all Dean could see of the room was the toilet, sat directly in front of the door. He could smell the bitter scent of vomit and bile clinging to the air. It made him wrinkle his nose slightly, but it didn’t bother him too much. He’d smelt worse. He poked his head round the door.

Cas was sat on the floor, curled in on himself in the corner where the bath met the wall. Some distant part of Dean’s brain wondered at that - how the instinct to assume the foetal position could be present in a being who had never been a foetus.

Cas’ breath was ragged as he struggled to take in air through his sobs. His head rested in the cradle of his elbows, his hands tugging at his hair. He rocked slightly, his shoulder brushing along the wall, his back pushed against the bathtub.

"Cas? Cas, what happened?"

There was a small murmur from where Cas’ face was, pressed between his elbows, buried in his knees, but it was so tiny and muffled Dean couldn’t make out a single word.

Panic was already starting to seize him. Cas had told him once that he had no idea if he would even survive this fall. No angel had ever fallen this way, he said. They had been cast out, like Lucifer, and retained their power, or their grace had been ripped from their bodies, like Anna, leaving them human. But none had been left to wilt on Earth after Heaven’s gates had been closed on them. There was no precedent for this. They had gone off the guide book long ago, and now Cas was shaking and throwing up and weeping in the corner, and Dean was losing someone else.

"Damn it Cas, would you just tell me what’s wrong, you’re freaking me out here," he snapped, instantly regretting it when Cas took a deep, shuddering breath in, only to release it in a broken sob before he could speak.

Dean padded the few feet to Cas, kneeling on his haunches in front of him, placing a hand on his arm. Cas was dressed as he was, in thinning pyjama pants and nothing else, so Dean had expected him to be cold. Yet he was still shocked by how  _freezing_  he was. His skin was  _ice_ , and covered in goosebumps, hair stood on end. He was wrapped so tightly around himself Dean hadn’t noticed his shaking before, but he could feel the vibration under his palm, could feel Cas’ almost-human body argue with itself, his fight or flight instinct battling against the knowledge that whatever was happening to him could not be fought off, could not be outrun. He kept his hand resting on Cas’ arm, and leant in closer to talk to him; quieter, gentler than before.

 "Cas? Cas, talk to me, buddy. You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?"

Cas lifted his head, keeping it against his forearms, but raised enough that Dean could see his face. His face was shining with wet tears, his cheeks pink and puffy, his eyes bloodshot and swollen. Dean couldn’t remember ever seeing him look so destroyed.

He looked at Dean, and his voice was barely there, reed thin and wavering.

“ _My wings_.”

"What about ‘em, Cas, what’s happened to your wings?"

"They’re  _breaking_. It feels like they’re… _decaying. I’m losing them, Dean_.”

If Dean was being honest, he hadn’t even thought about Cas’ wings in all of this. He’d always just thought of flight as being just another of Cas’ powers. When Cas stopped being able to travel more than once a day, and then stopped being able to go long distances, and then stopped flying altogether, it had been just another symptom of the fall, like everything else. It hadn’t occurred to him to think of Cas’ wings as  _limbs_ , as something more substantial than the shadows Cas had used to peacock for him to prove what he was.

 _This is your problem, Dean_ , he’d said.  _You have no faith._

He’d been right. The Righteous Man had been faithless since the day he saw his Mommy burn. But Cas believed.

He’d believed in his mission, in the goodness of Heaven. When the other angels tainted that goodness, Cas had given everything he had to right those wrongs. To do God’s work, to do the right thing.

 _Good things do happen, Dean_ , he’d told him. And he’d believed it.

Cas’ face crumpled again, tears rolling down his cheeks.

Dean grasped him by the shoulders, hauling him close, wrapping his arms around him as completely as possible. Cas let himself drop against Dean’s chest, quickly adjusting his position to bury his face in the crook of his neck, hands desperately holding onto whatever bit of Dean they could grasp.

“ _It **hurts** , Dean.”_

Dean held him tighter, crushing their bare chests together.

“ _I know, Cas. I’m sorry. I know.”_

They sat there, tangled together, for a long time, before Cas calmed slightly. Enough, at least, for Dean to stand, easing Cas to his feet, and walk him to the bed. Their bed, for tonight at least.

An hour later, knocked out on painkillers, Cas had finally fallen asleep against Dean’s chest to a litany of soothing whispers;  _I’m sorry, it’s ok, I’m not gonna leave you, it’ll stop soon_ , among others, confessions that Dean would continue to only whisper in the dark in the years to come.

~

Dean stroked the skin at Cas’ back, imagining unseen bones beneath his hand snapping off, oil black feathers rotting and breaking away in clumps. Thinks about the pain Cas will have to suffer through when he wakes up. The pain he will suffer through alone while Dean is forced to be a soldier first, a soldier above all else.

He thinks of his mother, her sweet voice whispering to him as she tucked him in, promising that God and his angels were watching, protecting. How she had believed that with all her heart, right up until she was gutted and burned by a demon.

He thinks of Sammy. Of the scrawny kid lit up by fireworks in an empty field. Of the heartbreak, the disgust in his eyes as he’d told Dean  _the problem’s me, there’s something in me, I’m dangerous_ , and walked out if his life for the last time.

 _He told me good things could happen_. He looked up at the cracked paint on the ceiling, directing his thoughts _. He told me to believe in you. I tried. Between us we must have prayed to you a thousand times and you’ve not shown your damn face once. But he was the only one of those bastards who tried. Who stayed behind to help the world you abandoned. And he’s pretty much all I have left. And he’s hurting, and I can’t…So I’m asking you, one last time. Help him. Help us. Please._

 

Dean closed his eyes. They had a long way to go come morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics taken from Ever the Same by Rob Thomas. It's cheesy as hell but it gives me Endverse emotions (and not 100% angsty awful ones, either), so it gets a free pass.


End file.
